Enrico Riley, a professor in Dartmouth's studio art department, was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship this month out of a pool of 2,600 applicants. The award will allow him to spend nine months studying the portrayal of music and dreams through painting.
Riley plans to spend part of the nine months researching musical notations in medieval manuscripts at Oxford University and the remainder of time examining Native American vision quest paintings -- which capture the artists' dreams -- in the Southwest United States. He will spend an additional part of his fellowship painting in Hanover.
"[The fellowship is] really quite exciting a great validation of the work that I will be doing," Riley said. "I think my work is strong, and I have confidence that I can make interesting paintings."
Riley was drawn to medieval manuscripts because they incorporate musical notation into artwork, he said. Riley has used notations from jazz scores as the basis for some of his own paintings, including a painting titled "Giant Steps" for which he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize.
When studying the vision quest paintings, Riley hopes to learn how artists depict the stories and images of their dreams through their work.
"There are two different ways of recording to music and recording dreams, but my interest is really aesthetic," Riley said. "How both bodies of information are presented visually is what is interesting to me."
Riley described himself as a contemporary painter who aims to challenge a viewer's perception. His art draws on simple geometric objects made from white wooden panels or oil on canvas, he said.
His work is sparse, he added, but is not minimalist.
"There are so many legitimate ways people express themselves -- realist, abstract, contemporary," he said. "I'm just a painter."
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation annually offers $8.2 million in fellowships to leading scholars, scientists and artists to pursue their work in their respective fields. Fellows are "appointed on the basis of stellar achievement in the past and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment," according to the foundation's press release.
"Enrico's artistry embodies his creative and scholarly energy," Dean of Faculty Carol Folt said in a press release. "I'm pleased that he has been recognized for his talent, which he shares with his students and our community regularly."
Previous Dartmouth recipients of the Guggenheim Fellowship include computer science professor Hany Farid in 2006, government professor Linda Fowler in 2005 and history professor Bruce Nelson in 2002.
